Efficacy, Distancing, and Reconciling: Religion and Race in Americans’ Abortion Attitudes

Tricia C Bruce

doi:10.3390/rel11090475

Abstract

Religion and race together inform Americans’ abortion attitudes, but precisely how remains contradictory and unclear. Presumptions of shared religious or secular “worldviews” dividing abortion opinion mask variation among racially diverse adherents within the same tradition. Theoretical gaps compel a deeper, qualitative exploration of underlying processes. This article uses close analysis of a religiously and racially diverse, ideal–typical subset of in-depth interviews from the National Abortion Attitudes Study to identify three processes operating at the intersection of religion and race in abortion attitudes: efficacy, distancing, and reconciling. While religion’s effect on abortion opinion remains paramount, accounting for social location illuminates meaningful variation. Findings offer an important corrective to overly-simplified narratives summarizing how religion matters to abortion opinion, accounting more fully for complex religion and religion as raced.

Highlights

Religion matters to abortion attitudes, whether measured as affiliation, belief, importance, attendance, or otherwise (Gay and Lynxwiler 1999; Hess and Rueb 2005; Jelen and Wilcox 2003; Adamczyk and Valdimarsdottir 2018)
This paper aims to generate new theory in the realm of religion, race, and abortion attitudes, remedying scant and contradictory conclusions drawn to date
The ways that race operates to inform abortion attitudes among this religiously diverse subsample of nine Americans can be described in terms of efficacy, distancing, and reconciling

Summary

Introduction

Religion matters to abortion attitudes, whether measured as affiliation, belief, importance, attendance, or otherwise (Gay and Lynxwiler 1999; Hess and Rueb 2005; Jelen and Wilcox 2003; Adamczyk and Valdimarsdottir 2018). Race matters to abortion attitudes, albeit demonstratively less so than religion (Bolks et al 2000; Wilcox 1990; Combs and Welch 1982; Carter et al 2009). Religion is itself “raced,” lending “cultural repertoires that people draw on and act upon very differently depending on their social location”. Religion and race are not neatly separated in how Americans form opinions on complex social issues, their interactions often contradictory. Religion is complex (Wilde 2020) and abortion attitudes multidimensional; religion and race work together to situate and complicate how Americans feel about myriad social issues including abortion

Objectives

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Conclusion